RE: Lotus five-car future is canned
Discussion
RTH said:
The entry level MX5 is £18000 that is the price Lotus need to compete with because they certainly cannot make such a refined car at this price, so they need a unique ultra light driving experience which means 700kgs, yet with a roof windows and doors that is daily usable.
The price of things is relative, it's also what you get for it, that helps you judge the value or worth of somethingThe problem is back in Elise launch time, the design was fresh, the performance compared to a Mx5 was massively better, and the engine was very tweakable a simple sports exhaust and air box/filter upgrade got you near 130hp which in the lightweight original dropped you easily below the 6 or so seconds to 60 time of the standard car, which 15 years ago was at least respectable in itself, all this helped you overlook the compromises in build and easy living.
Bang smack middle of 2012, the Mx5 is a lot faster than the versions that went up against the Elise all those years ago, while the 1.6 if anything has got slower..., the toyota engines 111r aside, which has a official S/C kit available for not to much money and decent poke out of the box, have no where near the easy tuning capability of the K, your bascically stuck with there miserable outputs unless you spend a lot of money, the extra weight totally blunts the extra 10 to 15 or so hp they muster up
If the 1.6 had a S/C and 170hp, it would look much better next to a modern Mx5, a much faster, and more sporting car, much like the original did all those years ago.
When the performance is near enough the same, the compromises and higher price charged start to look much more unpalatable
Sounds cautiously good. Though with VW on the horizon then......
If it has to compete (which it will) with the 348, 911 and McLaren's of this would. Then glass fibre and someone elses engine I don't reckon will cut it.
You will end up with a Lotus but half of a supercar Lotus and also a step backwards from the old one. If they are going to do it they will need to do it properly?
Is the engine from the 300 too old to update. Given all their engineering prowess they should be able to pull something out from it. It was a good lump as I recall.
Just doesn't seem ambitious enough again. There is always a gap between ambition and reality. Bahrs plan might have been over the top but it would have at least stretched the company, made its investors really commit and put Lotus firmly on the map. Even with the Esprit (even if it does not do an Evora) they will still be a shed manufacturer.
Really hope they bring out a well sorted Esprit but the competition is fierce. At one end you have Noble, at the other Pagani. In the middle Ferrari, McClaren and Porker. Because clearly these are the cars it will be compared to.
If it has to compete (which it will) with the 348, 911 and McLaren's of this would. Then glass fibre and someone elses engine I don't reckon will cut it.
You will end up with a Lotus but half of a supercar Lotus and also a step backwards from the old one. If they are going to do it they will need to do it properly?
Is the engine from the 300 too old to update. Given all their engineering prowess they should be able to pull something out from it. It was a good lump as I recall.
Just doesn't seem ambitious enough again. There is always a gap between ambition and reality. Bahrs plan might have been over the top but it would have at least stretched the company, made its investors really commit and put Lotus firmly on the map. Even with the Esprit (even if it does not do an Evora) they will still be a shed manufacturer.
Really hope they bring out a well sorted Esprit but the competition is fierce. At one end you have Noble, at the other Pagani. In the middle Ferrari, McClaren and Porker. Because clearly these are the cars it will be compared to.
100 million pound a year investment into a car company like lotus will ensure a premature death in my opinion, needed the reinventing to bring money in cant rely on the old Elise any longer the competition has caught up, and iv only ever seen two evoras on the road and i live near a lotus specialist
hope im wrong but this is very disappointing
hope im wrong but this is very disappointing
This week the Dept of transport put forward a plan to reduce all the national speed limits from 60 to 40mph.
This would mean all roads other than dual carriageways the max would become 40mph unless they were already 30, 20, or the current 10 mph in some cities.
So very little point in having any car with a powerful engine when a bicycle will be able to match the speed of any supercar.
Road deaths have fallen to the current 1900 per year (in 1930 9000 were killed on the roads of Britain at a time when there were a 1/20th of the motor vehicles on the roads.)
The vast majority of death on roads is motorcyclists, cyclists (none of which obey the highway code) and pedestrians very often the worst for drink.
So Lotus stick with light and great ability to change direction no need to worry about big power outputs in future Britain.
This would mean all roads other than dual carriageways the max would become 40mph unless they were already 30, 20, or the current 10 mph in some cities.
So very little point in having any car with a powerful engine when a bicycle will be able to match the speed of any supercar.
Road deaths have fallen to the current 1900 per year (in 1930 9000 were killed on the roads of Britain at a time when there were a 1/20th of the motor vehicles on the roads.)
The vast majority of death on roads is motorcyclists, cyclists (none of which obey the highway code) and pedestrians very often the worst for drink.
So Lotus stick with light and great ability to change direction no need to worry about big power outputs in future Britain.
RTH said:
So very little point in having any car with a powerful engine when a bicycle will be able to match the speed of any supercar.
The fastest you can legally drive on UK public roads is 70mph, in a lot of european countries it's even lessNobody buys supercars to drive everywere at 200mph, it's about the ownership experience, of which the "Potencial" performance is a part.
Who actually gets close to the performance of there supercars?? almost nobody is the answer and that has been the case for years and years and yet they sell more supercars now than ever before
Something to think about
Edited by peter450 on Saturday 28th July 17:56
I read interviews with Bahar. Struck me as a bumptious young man, full of pie-in-the-sky business school type crap, who knew nothing about Lotus and cared less. He had a generic, blinged-up approach to "supercars"; failed miserably to comprehend Lotus' DNA (spartan, cool, light, responsive); a DNA that is close to unique in world sports cars. Sure, improve the quality etc but keep the core virtues and the price points. I don’t want Lotus to be an "alternative" to Ferrari or Porsche or whatever, I want it to be a Lotus. I disliked his arrogance and his bulls
t. Good riddance. And he can't let it go - he's now suing them, presumably for not seeing the light of Bahar: http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/18/dany-bahar-to-s...
t. Good riddance. And he can't let it go - he's now suing them, presumably for not seeing the light of Bahar: http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/18/dany-bahar-to-s...
Something that struck me one time when I visited Hethel was how un-Proton it was. We were driven around the site in a Zafira. It didn't look like Protons were the boggo company car.
At the time I thought this independence strange but a gently good thing. To be competitive however they need scale. If VW bought Proton with Lotus that would be great, but if they sold Lotus off - the most likely scenario in my view - a VC funded, independent Lotus would never be able to make the numbers work.
At the time I thought this independence strange but a gently good thing. To be competitive however they need scale. If VW bought Proton with Lotus that would be great, but if they sold Lotus off - the most likely scenario in my view - a VC funded, independent Lotus would never be able to make the numbers work.
KDIcarmad said:
Nice to see a lot of you believe in the concept of Lotus. Low wight, good handling and low cost fun. Sadly it look like they will be pushed up market to be a Ferrari or Lambo competitor.
the problem here is that the low weight/basic sports car Lotus can do.to go up against Ferrai/Lambo etc requires a serious car, with a s
t load of development in every respect, something Lotus have never done in their entire history (of road cars).Look at the McLaren, are Lotus capable of making that kind of car?
CraigyMc said:
KDIcarmad said:
Sadly it look like they will be pushed up market to be a Ferrari or Lambo competitor.
If they are to continue making cars in the UK, they have to go to a higher part of the market.On the plus side, it seems to work for Jag/LR, Mclaren, Aston, Rolls et al.
C
Jaguar/LR definately seem to be moving in the right direction, and seem to have some momentum going with strong growing sales in the far east and elsewere and as strong a product lineup as i've seen them have for some time, the story looks good so far
Mclaren it remains to be seen, they've only been in the game a very short space of time, to early to judge IMO
Aston i dont know, i like there cars a lot (looks and style), buy being owned by some venture capital, sovereign wealth fund type of deal, has seen there cars start to look outdated next to Ferrari, Porsche and Lambo (i'm guessing there investment budget is miniscule) from a techinical standpoint, and new cars like the Virage just seem to be a rebodied (abeit nicely done) version of an existing product, rather than new car, which i think long term is going to see them end up in a not to great place, hopefully i'm wrong there but the signs dont look that good IMO
CraigyMc said:
KDIcarmad said:
Sadly it look like they will be pushed up market to be a Ferrari or Lambo competitor.
If they are to continue making cars in the UK, they have to go to a higher part of the market.On the plus side, it seems to work for Jag/LR, Mclaren, Aston, Rolls et al.
C
What we are really talking about here volume sales against low sale of very high cost/quality cars. If Lotus could sell in volume this works and you do need to move up market. Clearly one "supercar" at £150,000 against selling ten at 15,000 seem easier. How many car can Lotus build per year and sell? Currently only a few, to work with a low cost car you need to sell a lot. If you sell around 1000-2000 a year with a profit small profit on each, say around £900 profit on each you get £900,000. Lotus has sold 500 cars in a year in the past, £450000. Now that profit need to be used for new car and all the other thing a car company needs.
It is very tough to sell low cost cars in volume!
Scuffers said:
Look at the McLaren, are Lotus capable of making that kind of car?
I've always seen Lotus as a company that comes up with clever ways to cut their cloth. The Elise was brilliant for what it left out, and whilst their cars have often been a little agricultural, they've been perfect where it's important for driver satisfaction.If you're asking whether Lotus are capable of making a car that is all about showing off immense attention to detail and technical flourish, then no, they're not. They're not McLaren and never should be. But that's not the only way to deliver a car that is a pleasure to own and drive. The criticisms of the McLaren come from people who don't care for their approach, which is probably unjust, but reflects that there are different priorities.
At the moment the new Exige is being very favourably compared to the 911, but the two are really vastly different cars that appeal in different ways. The bonus is that Lotus' need to focus on what they do best produces a car that's twenty grand cheaper - another reason to buy the car built in Norfolk. Can Lotus produce a car like McLaren or Porsche? No, and nor should they. The Elise wasn't 'like' the MX-5, Boxter or any other competitor and didn't need to be to continue selling well for many years. I really don't think the market has changed so much that there's only one way to deliver a fantastic car.
smilo996 said:
Is the engine from the 300 too old to update. Given all their engineering prowess they should be able to pull something out from it. It was a good lump as I recall.
Rolls-Royce / Bentley scrapped their own V8 in favour of BMW units. When VW took over Bentley, they revived the V8 and updated it to compete. That was a very old engine compared to the 300's V8.Of course Lotus could update it to work. Would it be worth it? Would anybody pay for it? For Bentley, the old V8 was seen as an intrinsic part of the appeal of the vehicles at the time, and so critical. Can the same be said of the 300's V8?
peter450 said:
RTH said:
The entry level MX5 is £18000 that is the price Lotus need to compete with because they certainly cannot make such a refined car at this price, so they need a unique ultra light driving experience which means 700kgs, yet with a roof windows and doors that is daily usable.
The price of things is relative, it's also what you get for it, that helps you judge the value or worth of somethingThe problem is back in Elise launch time, the design was fresh, the performance compared to a Mx5 was massively better, and the engine was very tweakable a simple sports exhaust and air box/filter upgrade got you near 130hp which in the lightweight original dropped you easily below the 6 or so seconds to 60 time of the standard car, which 15 years ago was at least respectable in itself, all this helped you overlook the compromises in build and easy living.
Bang smack middle of 2012, the Mx5 is a lot faster than the versions that went up against the Elise all those years ago, while the 1.6 if anything has got slower..., the toyota engines 111r aside, which has a official S/C kit available for not to much money and decent poke out of the box, have no where near the easy tuning capability of the K, your bascically stuck with there miserable outputs unless you spend a lot of money, the extra weight totally blunts the extra 10 to 15 or so hp they muster up
If the 1.6 had a S/C and 170hp, it would look much better next to a modern Mx5, a much faster, and more sporting car, much like the original did all those years ago.
When the performance is near enough the same, the compromises and higher price charged start to look much more unpalatable
I actually think there is still a huge potential market for a lightweight Elise sportscar, but the current example (non S) is woefully short on power and a tad overpriced. The question is though, why can't Lotus
manufacture the base Elise for significantly less than the current £30k? It's after all just a very basic car with a fibreglass body, hardly any equipment and a 1.6 engine from the Toyota parts bin.
I may have read the answer to this in here (or in a magazine) that the build process and manufacturing techniques are manual labour intensive, and simply cannot be reduced significantly without a complete ground-up redesign.
Perhaps the only answer is an Elise Mk3, with a complete redesign making them easier to build and cheaper to maufacture, possibly with the combination of being built in a lower cost location (Eastern Europe?). Then add in a 1.8 or 2.0 litre engine making at least 160-170bhp, for a good few thousand cheaper than the current car.
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